Books
The Wilderness After Which
Excerpt "I talk as if I know of what I speak. I act as if I have the wherewithal to cross the Great Lake with only the lantern of a tomatillo. That would be bizarre, trusting in a green light. A starless expanse, the wreck of a canoe, a tomatillo warm from my garden. The day that was long lives longer in the nightshade. The beetle goes on unseen, consumed with luxurious eating. I can't, at the taciturn moon, be outraged. I discover a soft spot which looks like blight but is light."
Seismicity Editions, Otis Books, 2017
Sunshine Wound
"While the poems in this alert collection rarely depend on specific geography, there is a strong sense of somewhere here. These poems catch the mind in the process of thinking and plot the subtle constellations that arise from the intersection between the actual and the imaginary. Shades and tones and moods are evoked, as we might find in the paintings many of these poems reference. And yet, there are quiet echoes of our real world of human endeavor to provide a sense that something's out-of-whack as well as the sense there's something vital to hope for. This is a deeply satisfying book."
—Maurice Manning
Free Verse Editions, Parlor Press, 2015
Cloud of Ink
“L. S. Klatt’s new collection creates a taxonomy of mystery, magic, surprise. Like a cloud, it floats through the reader’s mind with playful shapeliness—but like ink, it leaves a darker, and lasting, impression.”
—Robert N. Casper, publisher, jubilat
University of Iowa Press, 2011
Interloper
"There are cows of a higher mathematics in Interloper’s pages. Invention, imagination, thinking invited to test what is new, what hasn't been imagined―these are given pride of place in Klatt’s poems. . . . The book is a field guide for any mind exercising to learn unknown transfers and connecting combinations."
―Dara Wier, author of Reverse Rapture
University of Massachusetts Press, 2009
Selected Reviews
Reviews for Cloud of Ink
“L. S. Klatt’s Cloud of Ink, one of the two winners of the 2010 Iowa Poetry Prize, is a solid volume of eccentric, dense, whimsical, occasionally inscrutable and occasionally gorgeous poetry.”
—Full Stop
“Cloud of Ink has a naturalist’s descriptive power and sense of wonder, but it’s true wisdom is Klatt’s reticence in the face of partial understanding. He notes that “the horse like a hearse / is patient.” More shepherd than hunter, more sailor than captain, Klatt shares that virtue.”
—Boston Review
“Whereupon you are alone / in a cockpit” begins L. S. Klatt’s collection, Cloud of Ink. With such an opening, who could fail to read on? Winner of the Iowa Prize, Cloud of Ink invites us through the looking-glass to a numinous inner landscape. Grasshoppers morph to Confederate swordsmen in “A Sudden Unspeakable Indignation,” while in “Andrew Wyeth, Painter, Dies at 91,” the familiar hayfields of Wyeth’s paintings are invaded by a giant squid that rises up and wraps a barn in its tentacles. No explanation given. In this universe weirdness simply happens, bringing with it a startling emotional resonance.”
—West Branch Wired
Reviews for Sunshine Wound
“L. S. Klatt paints much like Vincent van Gogh: both use bold, vibrant images formed from thick-laid colors. The difference is that Klatt paints with words.”
—Books & Culture
Reviews for Interloper
“His voice is deliberate and wise, making no dogmatic claims. . . . His poetry is steeped with humility before the vastness of space and the harshness of reality. . . . His subtle humor carries the book from beginning to end in one sitting. . . . Words tumble together into a symphony of images, often correlated only by their context. Together the sounds and their meanings paint a large sonic canvas peppered with explosions of life and stasis, an image to be read over ages. . . . Interloper is a cohesive body, indicative of many years honing. Its vibrant images of memory and doubt, despite their ambiguous cohesion, foster a common ground between author and reader. Existence is portrayed as equally uninviting and inevitable.”
—Verse
“In his first book, Juniper Prize winner Klatt marches through the jungle of overused words and symbols to create a refined language yearning to be new. . . . Klatt's poems are charged with primeval energy that rejects finalities in meaning and embraces the act of becoming. The result is rewarding reading for those who seek a unique and fresh poetic voice.”
—Library Journal
